I drove across town to my local YMCA last week so I could do something a little selfless for the common good—donating blood. In the past six months I’ve gotten two mailers and two phone calls appealing for donations and heard a few more calls for help on the local news. As has happened three …

In the days of the intrepid explorers, getting from point A to point B was a death-defying experience. And you had to be either very wealthy or be financed by royalty. Think how far we’ve come in the past century, just with commercial flights, rental cars, subways, and air-conditioned buses. The staggering thing, though, is …

When you go on a one-week vacation, it’s pretty easy to figure out where you want to go. You either choose a place based on your budget or choose a place based on set criteria: beach relaxation, an adventure, seeing the relatives, whatever. One destination and you’re done. When you go traveling for a longer …

Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran a story about the lengths some companies are going to with their architects in order to get us “knowledge economy” fat-butts to get some exercise during the day. They’re putting parking lots as far away from the offices as they can, in order to make people walk further. …

Once upon a time my wife got a batch of free magazine subscriptions in some promotion and we ended up with Travel Holiday. It was an especially awful travel magazine, one where you couldn’t tell where the ads stopped and the stories started. One big blur of luxury hotels and natives catering the rich traveler’s …